Monk's Mackerel from Mount Athos

There are these Greek monks from the monasteries of Mount Athos who apparently are some of the most healthy people on earth. They don't eat much, no meat, they occasionally eat fish, and their diet is famed for its anti-cancer properties. As one Times journalist says: 'if you want to avoid cancer, live like a monk'. I remember reading a Guardian give away leaflet about them, and when Jaimie went to stay with his Dad recently he cooked one of the dishes from it.

We were invited over to Natali's, (she's Chew The Fat don't you know) on Friday evening, where we planned to cook together. Jaimie had suggested that we cook this monk's dish that his Dad had made, so that's what we did.

The dish is really simple to make and really tasty. And, really very good for you.

So to make the monk's mackerel you will need (to feed 4)...

6 mackerel fillets
Spring onions, 2 bunches (about 25ish), topped and tailed
Plum tomatoes, around 6 good sized specimens, sliced
Ground cumin, 2 tsp
Dried oregano, 2 tsp
Garlic, loads. Perhaps 2 heads, whole cloves given a bash
Olive oil
Flat leaf parsley, 1 bunch

Pre heat your oven to 180 degrees.

Firstly we prepped our onions and tomatoes. All you need to do is to slice your tomatoes into 1cm thick slices, and tidy up your spring onions, keeping them whole but removing their ends.


You need to create a bed of these vegetables for your fish to sit on. So take a roasting tin/dish and place all your spring onions in the bottom, and top with a layer of tomatoes. You should use about half of the tomatoes for this. Jaimie chose to lay these out very precisely, but you don't have to. Jaimie described this dish as 'a kind of mackerel and tomato lasagna' due to the layering involved in its preparation. You are basically preparing a bed on which to cook the fish, so to beef up the flavour sprinkle some of the dried oregano over the tomatoes with some olive oil, and then add to the roasting dish all of the bruised cloves of garlic. It may seem excessive, but the more the merrier.


Next take your fish, we had the fish monger fillet some whole mackerel for us. Mackerel, what a cost conscious fish. We bought all this fish for £3.80. Not too bad at all, I'm sure you will agree. The fillets need to be patted dry, then salted and cumin rubbed into the skin and flesh. These are then placed on top of the spring onion, tomato and garlic bed.


Top the fish with the remaining tomatoes, and season with salt, pepper and add another glug of olive oil. Place in the oven and bake for 20-30 minutes. When the fish is cooked remove from the oven and top with chopped flat leaf parsley and serve immediately.

Here is our attempt fresh out of the oven...


This could totally be served as a dish on its own. But there were hungry boys to feed at dinner, so we decided to serve this with a roasted fennel, feta and pomegranate salad and new potatoes with truffle oil and Parmesan.


The salad was SO nice that I'm going to give you that recipe too:

So for my Roast Fennel, Feta & Pomegranate Salad you will need:

2 heads of fennel, each cut into around 8 pieces
150g feta, the best you can afford, (DON'T use salad cheese, it's shit) crumbled
Seeds of 1 pomegranate
Handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
Olive oil

Pre heat your oven to 180 degrees

Place the fennel in an oven proof dish and coat in olive oil and season with salt and pepper, and roast in the oven for about 20 minutes. We baked our fennel just slightly just to make it slightly sweeter.

When the fennel is lightly cooked, remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly for about 10 minutes.

Combine the baked fennel with the rest of the ingredients and season.

Simple as that, but TOTALLY delicious.


We had a lovely dinner, got to meet Natali's lovely chap properly, had a glass of nice wine and were in bed by 11:30. Oh and did our selves masses of good with our super healthy Greek monk food. And ruined it with a KitKat Chunky on the way home.